Fight's On! The origins of TOPGUN and dogfights back in the day/future prospects

[A4sForever]

.....Seriously, I believe given A4's experience and BFM training, he might give either pilot fits......

Oh, Jesus ... hear we go again .... "might"? "MIGHT"??!! "MIGHT "??!!??!!

You can't see any HUD info as far as alpha, a/s, alt, nore tell what the viper is doing, or hear any comm as far as shots. So how the hell can anyone critique it?

HOW??? How in the "hell", you say ... ??? ANYONE can't ... BUT: "anyone" with skill, experience, and a whole bunch of hours logged (no HUD) looking throught an ironsight/gunsight at F-4's, F-15's, F-16's, F-18's, F-106's, a whole bunch of "A's" series airplanes doing last-ditch maneuvers ........ "can" ....... that's "how???" How, indeed. :sleep_125

Please refer to Zippy's providential addition of the link to the fight and the post-mortems for the answer to all your questions ... thanks, Zip.

The fight & the debrief: a.k.a. the good, bad, and ugly ....

 

[BigIron]

The F-16 pilot was an arrogant tool, prior to the flight.

Was he still a tool after the flight?

 

[invertedflyer]

I talked to the CANG viper pilots here at March... they said they try to avoid a "slow fight" with the hornet due to its unparalleled slow speed handling. Also if you read Jay Stout's Hornets over Kuwait he says that hes never lost a neutral start 1v1 vs. an F-16 or F-15.

What airspeeds did you bleed off to in this fight jar?

^^ and yeah, interested in what the debrief went like.

 

[skidkid]

We are getting close to OPSEC line, I know those in the know know what to post but questions like the one above will cause the thread to be closed.

 

[A4sForever]

Since the vid has been discussed in the previous thread ... kill it, Skid. KILL IT !!! KILL IT !!!!

Let's see that Spirit of Attack reborn ... !!!

Or don't. There's ALWAYS room for more Ready Room Commandos .... but yeah ... let's knock-it-off with questions like: "how many knots do you lose in the F-18 ... "?

 

[A4sForever]

......Any hornet guys out there care to comment?....

ACTUALLY ... since I bumped, thumped, and "fought" a P-3 to a "draw" outside the mouth of Subic Bay ... (the guy used the horizontal like a pro) ... I'd like to see some P-3 input as well ..... p.s. ... a great debrief that PM at the Cubi O'club bar ....

 

[jarhead]

Curious, is it common to switch hands like he does while he's maneuvering? A few times he has his right hand up on the right canopy rail handle which would make me think he's flying left handed.

Not a big deal I suppose, I do swap hands when tuning vor's, etc, but I just wouldn't think so during bfm or high rate maneuvers as the left hand might need to manipulate the throttles at the same time.

The throttles stay in AB majority of the time during BFM. You do what you can to maintain sight during BFM to include flying left handed.

A fair question. Given the disparity in performance …

… Finally I always believed that fighting a horizontal, two-dimensional fight gives the opponent a 33.3% advantage in our three-dimensional world. Check six.

Thanks for the critique, Sir. BFM is taught different today because of performance differences between the aircraft, but generally the same rules and techniques still apply. I'm sure I speak the same language as you and A4 when it comes to BFM and I know I could still learn something from you two.

Was he still a tool after the flight?

yes, but a humble one

We are getting close to OPSEC line, I know those in the know know what to post but questions like the one above will cause the thread to be closed.

No worries … I’m not going to discuss tactics or performance numbers, of either aircraft

I've got a couple videos of a 1v1 fight against an F-15C, just never gotten around to post them here.

S/F

 

[HAL Pilot]

ACTUALLY ... since I bumped, thumped, and "fought" a P-3 to a "draw" outside the mouth of Subic Bay ... (the guy used the horizontal like a pro) ... I'd like to see some P-3 input as well ..... p.s. ... a great debrief that PM at the Cubi O'club bar ....

We did a bunch of defensive air combat maneuvering flights prior to deploying to Saudi in 1988. After a few fights, we learned that if we hugged the hard deck and denied the fighter the vertical, we could out turn them all day long. The fighters had to resort to a diving strafing run but as long as we kept someone's eyes on the fighter, we dodged those pretty well too (it was a hell of a crew coordination issue with heads in every available window). Further, we could quickly run them out of gas so if we avoided 3 or 4 strafing runs, we lived. We did this with F-4s, F-14s, F-15s, F-16s, A-4s, A7s and F-18s. If we were gunned, it was usually by the A-4s as they seemed to come the closest to turning with us. The majority of the training was with the F-4s (USAF) and F-14s as that is what the Iranians had. Every crew fought at least those 2.

Of course this only worked for guns......we were dead meat for missles.....

 

[invertedflyer]

My mistake on the OPSEC.... thanks for the info you did give jar. Any idea we can score that F-15 video from you?

 

[invertedflyer]

On a side note... this clip from jarhead has become pretty popular across the web. on PAW alone it has 11,930 views. And I've seen it on youtube and others as well. famous guy we've got here.

 

[e6bflyer]

On a side note... this clip from jarhead has become pretty popular across the web. on PAW alone it has 11,930 views. And I've seen it on youtube and others as well. famous guy we've got here.

You've got a little something on the side of your mouth.

 

[invertedflyer]

(still recovering from laughter)

 

[scoober78]

You've got a little something on the side of your mouth.

Nice..."Is that....hair gel?"

 

[invertedflyer]

Hairs too short for hair gel... uh oh.

 

[HAL Pilot]

Hairs too short for hair gel... uh oh.

You need to watch one of the funniest movies of all time......